Get a Grip
by WRTRD
Summary: Set fairly early on in S4. Uh-oh. Beckett inadvertently makes a move on Castle. Now what?
1. Chapter 1

It was completely Castle's fault. Utterly his fault. One hundred percent, God, no, 200 percent his fault. Okay, maybe it was the teensiest bit hers, but really, he had been needling her, and now she's hiding out in the precinct ladies' room, with one hand sharply pulling her hair away from her blushing face and the other, the offending hand, stuffed in her pocket.

Kate Beckett is still red-faced two full minutes after what she has already labelled, in her rapidly fraying mind, "The Incident." She's trying to figure out if it's actually possible to die of embarrassment. Death by mortification. Mortification of the flesh. Wait, not that kind of mortification of the flesh, not self-flagellation, because really, shouldn't she be beating up Castle? Since this is all his fault. And, shit, she really, really has to stop thinking about flesh. Especially his flesh, which she has definitively not explored. Admittedly, she has explored it plenty in her imagination, but not in the, well, flesh.

They have been inching towards something for weeks—for years, if she were honest with herself, which she should be since she's holed up here in the very same stall where Castle had caught her all but drooling over page 105 of _Heat Wave_ ages ago. They have spent incalculable amounts of time flirting, verbally fencing, but lately their thrust and parry has gotten a lot heavier on the thrusting, especially on Castle's part. Still, Beckett isn't quite ready to concede, to tear off the mask, to put down the sword. Is she?

It was definitely Castle who precipitated "The Incident." They were standing together in front of the murder board. Beckett's frustration at not having gotten a handle on this case after three days was already high, and rising. Furthermore, the city is in the middle of a heat wave, the last, brutal gasp of summer, and the precinct's antediluvian AC is about as effective as a fly swatter deployed against an entire Okefenokee Swamp mosquito swarm.

But there was Castle, looking irritatingly comfortable in his bespoke linen shirt, with his sleeves rolled precisely three inches below his elbows. How the hell was he so unrumpled, anyway? Even his hair was perfect. He was closing in on her, crowding her, incessantly murmuring remarks that were designed to get under her (sweaty) skin. When he said, "The heat getting to you, Beckett? Can't be. You _are_ the heat," she snapped. She turned sharply, fixing him with a glare that could peel the scales off an armadillo. Raising his hands, palms up, Castle stepped away.

Ryan and Esposito were out chasing some sure-to-be-a-dead-end, rat's-ass lead. Beckett, still looking at the board, was so intent on trying to think what she might have overlooked in the case that she didn't realize that Castle had come back. He was hovering so near to her that his breath was warm in her ear. If he blew in it, so help her, she'd kill him, and there would be no witnesses.

He didn't. Instead, he leaned perilously closer and whispered giddily, "Beckett, have you thought about wearing a skirt in this weather? That would be seriously hot. I mean, you'd be cooler, but you'd be seriously hot. What a thermodynamic paradox, right?"

How could she have known that he had gone off to get her an iced latte? She spun around with the intent of smacking him on the arm, his gorgeously muscled arm, and telling him to stuff it. Spinning too quickly, she missed her mark, knocking the latte out of his hand and making a belated, futile grab for the plastic cup. What she grabbed, hard, and squeezed, was not the cup but his crotch. His alluringly hard crotch. Simultaneously, in hapless synch, Beckett and Castle made strangled, indecipherable noises, and locked eyes. Then, compelled to look down, she discovered with horror that she was, unaccountably, still palming him. She let go as if her hand, and his pants, were on fire—and fled.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: **The only part of Castle that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

**A/N:** This is a reposting of chapter 2, because I incorrectly formatted it, rendering it all but unreadable. My apologies!

The unflappable Kate Beckett—bad-ass homicide cop Badge Number 41319 and don't you forget it, buddy—is in a full-blown flap. How the hell is she going to get out of here? Here, the ladies room, and the more important here, the skin-singeing situation with Castle. Ugh, she is so sweaty. A few minutes more in this bathroom stall and she'll probably be able to slide out the door on her sweat.

Even in her manic state, she's aware that someone just opened the ladies' room door. It can't be knows-no-boundaries Castle, can it? She's not sure if she's breathing well enough to get oxygen to her brain. Wait. Whoever it is has gone into the adjoining stall. Kate steels herself, then leans down a little so that she can see the feet under the partition. Are there size-12 loafers attached to those legs?

Thank God, they're stilettos. It's the captain. Beckett needs a plan, fast. She's trained to disarm hopped-up gangbangers and homicidal maniacs in a nanosecond, so surely she can come up with something now. Yes! She'll open her stall door, wash her hands and loiter by the sink until Captain Gates emerges. Beckett needs to stay on her superior's good side, to cultivate her good will, assuming that she has any.

"Sir," Beckett says, her hand raised to her face and obscuring half of it. "I hope you don't mind my saying that those are really beautiful shoes. Beautiful."

Gates is briefly taken aback. "Thank you, Detective," she says, and then waits a beat. "Is there something bothering Mister Castle?"

"What, sir? No!"

"Well, he's standing by your desk, looking far more flustered than usual. And he's oddly _silent_."

"Ah. Right. He's probably worried about my mouth. I mean tooth, worried about my tooth. I cracked a tooth just now," Beckett mumbles through lying lips. "I called my dentist and luckily he had a cancellation. He can squeeze me in if I can be there in fifteen minutes."

"Go on then, Detective. I can't have you wandering around here gap-toothed."

"Yes, sir," Beckett says, all but flinging herself to the stairs to get out of the precinct.

When Gates walks back through the bullpen, she finds Castle still standing in the same spot, looking as if he had been painlessly Tasered. "Your partner has gone to the dentist, Mister Castle, so why don't you go on home?" He looks blankly at her. "The dentist, Mister Castle, to get her cracked tooth repaired."

"Oh." It's really all he can manage, until he summons up a croaky "Night, sir." Somehow, without having to resort to the compass on his phone, he manages to steer himself to the elevator and then out into the sweltering streets. There, with the luck of the supremely rich and the befuddled, he immediately finds a cab to take him home.

He's still dumbstruck. How many minutes have passed since the magical moment in which Beckett groped him? Accidentally groped him. Apparently accidentally, you know what Freud said about accidents. And who is he to question Freud, especially in a sexually charged atmosphere? Where did Beckett go, anyway? Definitely not the dentist.

OK, they need to talk. Ha! There's some familiar territory. They've avoided talking about the freezer and the undercover kiss, but this, this is the _big_ one. No pun intended, he doesn't mind saying. And Kate—yes, right now she's Kate—couldn't help but have noticed. He saw it in her eyes, and eyes are a dead giveaway. The pupils most of all, and her pupils were obliterating her irises. Yeah, this is the elephant in the room, and he doesn't mean the elephant in the giant photo that's overlooking his bed. Whoa, maybe he should keep his thoughts away from his bed. Oh, the cab has turned onto Broome Street. He's home. He should try to decide how to approach Beckett, but he's still too happily addled.

Beckett, as Castle so accurately surmised even in his overheated state, is not at the dentist. She's at home, behind triple-locked doors; she has shed her work clothes and poured herself a drink that could fell a 400-pound bouncer. She texts Gates to say that the dentist is saving her tooth, but that she will be have to be out for the rest of the afternoon. Will the wrath of God descend on her for lying to a captain in the NYPD? Her captain? Well, she was stuck on the case anyway. It would be better to take a breather and come back to it tomorrow, refreshed. Oh, there's nothing like rationalization to soothe the soul, except she's not feeling at all soothed.

Put on your big-girl pants, she thinks to herself as she notices that she's wearing only a flimsy camisole and boy shorts. Imagine what Castle would do if he saw her in those. Forget it. Not going to happen, at least not yet. She'll just go to Castle's loft and apologize. No harm, no foul. We're all grown-ups here, or not. That's it, she'll go. She can think well on her feet. Look how she handled Gates in the ladies room.

Half an hour later, she's standing at Castle's door, finally finding the courage to ring the bell. Please let him not be here, please, please. The door swings open, and a redheaded human bird of paradise swathed in a dress of indescribable colors greets her.

"Katherine! What a lovely surprise! Do come in," Martha says. "Are you here about Richard?" Kate is suddenly rendered mute. "Richard, dear. Do you know what's up with him?"

"_Up_?" Kate squeaks, trying to banish any image of "up" connected with Castle.

"Yes, well he came back from the precinct looking as if he had been hit by something, but confused, you know? I asked him if anything were wrong and he just said, 'muh, muh, muh.' I thought at first he was trying to say 'Mother,' but apparently not. He grabbed some ice cubes, put them in a glass, went into his office and shut the door. It was the oddest thing."

Beckett finds her voice. "Martha, would it be all right if I looked in on him? Maybe it's something to do with the, er, case we've been working on."

"Of course. I'm on my way out, so I'll leave you two alone."

Alone? Why did Martha have to say 'alone'? Why couldn't she have stayed, flittering and hovering? Beckett knocks lightly on the office door, pushes it and sees Castle by the window. Bite the bullet, she thinks, tear off the Band-Aid, just get this over with. God, this whole mess has reduced her to a barely held together bunch of cliches, another in a litany of embarrassments.

"Castle?" she says at last, as they eye each other from an uncomfortably comfortable distance. "Um. I don't really know where to start. I thought I did, but I don't. This is really hard."

"Hard, Beckett? _Hard_? Well, as I remember your saying to me once, you have no idea."

TBC

**A/N** Thank you so much for all the reviews, favorites and follows. They came out of left field, and you've made me, a rookie, stunned and happy. Special thanks to Liv Wilder, FF writer extraordinaire, for the cheerleading.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: **The only part of Castle that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

Beckett wonders if her synapses are misfiring. She has always been able to read Castle, but at this excruciating moment she can't tell whether he is (A) teasing or (B) pissed off. Mentally citing historical precedent, she decides to bet on (A). That, of course, immediately makes her a little (B): she has to get control of this situation before it becomes a runaway train. Oh, God, another cliche, and this one has a sexual undertone. She might have turned an even deeper shade of red.

"Can you be serious for a minute, Castle?" she asks sternly.

"I am serious," he says, without changing expression. Beckett is really worried now. Maybe he really is (B), and she should be (A)? No, she'll stick with her original choice.

"Then seriously," she says. "Get a grip." The instant the last three words leave her mouth, which her brain apparently abandoned somewhere near the door, she knows that she's in trouble.

"You were the one who did that," Castle says. "I should know. I was the grip-ee."

Beckett is trying to look at him without looking at him, and while she weighs the physical impossibility of that she feels some weird kind of buzz descend on her. Uh-oh, it's that single-malt Scotch that she had been saving for a special occasion. Well, if grabbing Castle by the balls in the middle of the precinct doesn't qualify as a special occasion, what does? Bizarre, true, but one hell of an occasion. The Scotch that she tossed down on an empty stomach, the drink that could have KOed the bouncer, has kicked in at the very very wrong time. But this buzz feels really weird. What is it? Her brain is fuzzy. Maybe somebody spiked her drink. No, she had been alone. Is she so unglued that she spiked her own drink?

She glances at Castle, who continues to wear the impassive expression of someone who is posing for a passport photo. Or maybe a mug shot. That's when it happens. The buzz transmogrifies, turning her embarrassment and her determination to have a Serious Talk with Castle into something that feels like—um, like what? Like alchemy? No, that would be a good thing, and she suspects that this isn't good. A chemical experiment gone wrong? An unexpected side effect to a prescription drug—shortness of breath, amnesia, hair loss, death? Oh, who's she kidding? It's something worse: Kate Beckett has an unbidden, uncontrollable case of the giggles.

They start with a little snicker, and escalate fast. Suddenly they are volcanic, galvanic; she is an avalanche of hysteria. She has never laughed like this in her life. With her nose running, her knees unaccountably incapable of supporting her, her enviable abdominal muscles betraying her, she collapses onto the office floor. She looks up and says, drawing out each syllable, "Grip-ee? Yippee!"

Castle is gaping. How is he supposed to react to this altered-state Beckett? He has conjured up at least 500 different images of her spread out on this very floor, but none like this. Number 501 is new, game-changeingly new, and he's a little nervous about approaching her. She might be wearing her gun, although where she could be hiding it in those second-skin pants and blouse is all but imponderable.

"Beckett?"

"Yup."

"Kate?"

"Yup, that's me, too."

"Kinda don't recognize you."

"Really, after all this time?" She gives a little snort. "And after what happened back at the precinct, you never saw—"

She's laughing so hard now that she can't seem to finish her thought. Castle decides she might need a little prompt. "I never saw …?" Still nothing. "I never saw….what?"

"You never saw me _coming_?"

That's all it takes for Castle to erupt along with her, a Vesuvius of laughter to Beckett's Mount St. Helens. He drops down onto the floor beside her. A few moments later, he more or less pulls himself together and decides to take a gargantuan risk. What the hell, this has been a lunatic day. Surely she can forgive him this little foray over the line. After all, he's the grip-ee.

"It's true, Kate," Castle says. "I've never actually seen you coming. Are you offering me something here?"

Wow, that sobers her up in a hurry. She takes a really good look at him and sees that he's not (A) or (B). He's a whole lot of other things, like hopeful and trusting and smitten—and still funny.

"You know that was an accident, right, Castle? When I, you know, grabbed you."

"Well, yeah."

"But the hard part—"

"Kate!"

"I guess I'm responsible for the hard part." A chuckle might be about to emerge. "_Your_ hard part."

"Day and night, Beckett," Castle says, not bothering to suppress a grin.

"Think I should do something about it?"

"I do." He inches a little closer. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure, why not."

"What was Gates talking about? She told me that you went to the dentist."

"I had to think of something so that I could get the hell out of there, Castle. I told her I had cracked a tooth. That was the best I could come up with in a hurry."

"You were in a hurry, huh?"

"I guess so," Beckett says, turning to face him fully, licking her lips and looking she-wolfishly at him.

"A cracked tooth, Kate? Do I have to ask you to be careful? If you're going where I hope you're going, that is."

TBC

**A/N:** Thank you for your wonderful continuing support of this story. I appreciate it more than you can imagine.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: **The only part of Castle that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

**A/N:** Please note that this chapter is beginning to venture into M territory, sort of the suburbs of M, so it's rated M for safety.

"Oh, I know where I'm going. That's how the song goes, Castle, the old Scottish song. Betcha didn't know that." Beckett is almost nose-to-nose with him when she begins to hum. The hum becomes the sexy, slightly husky alto that he has heard only once before, the day that he bought The Old Haunt, when he and Beckett and the boys joined in on "Piano Man" before heading out to his new old bar.

"I know where I'm going," Kate sings, moving up onto her knees without breaking their gaze. "And I know who's going with me," she continues, throwing her left leg over his right and pressing her thigh to his. All but on his lap, she starts the next line, "I know—" She freezes. She's realizes that she has to stop right here, stop the song in mid-flight. Castle won't even notice, she'll make sure of it.

She's wrong: he does notice. She probably doesn't remember telling him, but he knows that she had a Scottish great-grandmother, and she used to sing to little Katie. And he knows something even more important than that, because he is a movie maven, and all self-respecting movie mavens have seen and re-seen Michael Powell's brilliant _I Know Where I'm Going_. It was made in 1945, starred the perfect Wendy Hiller, and took its title from an old song. It's the song with the third line that has brought Beckett up short, the one that she is avoiding. Should he fill in the blanks, complete the line, or will that scare her off?

He's processing all this at warp speed. Now that she is delectably in his face and right under his nose, he detects a faint essence of Scotch. Ah, he bets it's the bottle of 25-year-old Bowmore that he gave her after they survived the deep-freeze trailer, said that it would warm her up. It seems to have done its job, and he thinks that he should send a thank-you note to the owner of the distillery on the island of Islay. Is she drunk? He sure as hell doesn't want to advance if her advance—and she is rapidly advancing on him—is fueled by booze. Nah, the woman has a hollow leg, she can drink four of him under the table. She couldn't possibly be drunk or she wouldn't have stopped singing right when she did. He breathes in—which, given Beckett's proximity, pushes him into sensory overload—and makes the decision. He's going for it. He'll sing the next line, a string of five one-syllable words.

Beckett cocks her ear a fraction. Did Castle just hum? Was that a hum moving up through his massive chest that she is finally admitting is a work of chiseled fucking art? His lips are parting and oh, he's singing. He's singing to her.

"I know who I love." His delivery of the simple, unornamented line is a mix of seduction and sincerity. It's emotionally pitch-perfect, and she's quivering like a tuning fork.

And just like that she knows that this is it. This is it, and she closes the final inch of what was once a crevasse between them, wrapping herself around him with a ferocity that almost undoes him. "I know who I love, too," she says. Suddenly, they are all over each other, rolling on the floor, kissing, nipping, licking, tickling, scratching, stopping briefly only to facilitate ripping their clothes off each other.

Castle throws Kate's blouse behind him, startled to find—how had he not noticed this earlier?—that she is bare beneath it. "Your breasts, Kate," he says, as if mammaries were a new and exotic discovery, something that he had never seen before. Maybe I haven't, he thinks, as he takes one perfect mound in each hand.

She is as surprised as he. She left her apartment that way? What does that say about her intent, for God's sake? Well, she's beyond caring now. "I'd call it a Freudian slip, except it was a bra," she says. They begin laughing all over again, until Castle all but engulfs one of her breasts with his very warm, very wet, very strong mouth, and sucks it like a man dying of thirst on the open sea. She runs her hands down his arms, still astonished at the musculature that he had been hiding from her. She can't get her hand even halfway around one of his huge biceps, which leads her to wonder about wrapping a hand around another body part.

Castle is still obsessively occupied with her breasts, alternately sucking and kneading them as he curls into her. She grabs one of his hands, and he gives her a stunned look. "What? You want me to _stop_, Kate?"

"No, I don't want you to _stop_, you loon, I want you to move." It's odd that after all this time of him pressing her, she's now having to push him. "I want to get your pants off, and I'm pretty sure you want to do the same to me." Presto, they're on their feet, and in seconds both pairs of pants land in the general vicinity of the desk. He is down to his Zombie Apocalypse boxers and she is left in nothing but the evidence of a recent bikini wax.

"Commando?" Castle squeals, reaching out to grab her by the waist. "Did you ensorcell me? Did we leap three months ahead to Christmas? Because this is maybe the best present ever."

"No, we're not time traveling, and believe it not, this is a first for me. I'm not G.I. Jane Commando."

"But you're not wearing any underwear," Castle insists, in a loopy statement of the obvious.

"That might have been unintentional, too," Beckett says, suddenly shy. "I guess it's a case of a Freudian thong."

Castle is laughing again, but still staring at her. He moves his hands behind her to caress her ass, but holds her at enough of a remove that he can take her in from head to toe.

"Castle," Beckett says, ducking her head and then lifting it under his chin to give him a nudge. "What are you waiting for? Don't you remember how this started?"

"Of course," he says, shaking his head a little. "When you feloniously arrested me at the library."

"No, I mean, don't you remember how this started _today_?" In one almost seamless movement, she yanks his boxers down and grabs him. And this time, she doesn't let go.

TBC…they're off to the (M-rated) races in the next chapter

**A/N:** Thanks to all readers, especially those who have followed or favorited, and huzzahs for those who have taken the time to review. I appreciate every one of you.


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: **The only part of Castle that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

**A/N:** Please note that this chapter is rated M.

She's gawking at Castle in all his glory, oh Lordy, Lord, glory is the word for it. Glory Hallelujah. Why can't she get rid of these stupid cliches as easily as she did Castle's adorably dorky boxers? She's feeling fizzily high now, rather than fuzzy, as if she had inhaled nitrous oxide. Which she could have if she really had needed to go to the dentist. It's his _body_. With his ego, why didn't he dress to flaunt it? And how did he get it, anyway? Not to mention maintain it. He eats junk food. He keeps terrible hours. His idea of working out is putting on sweats but never working up one. Sweat, that is. That's about to change, the sweaty part. She's going to make him sweat like never before.

The truth is that neither of them can quite comprehend what has finally happened, and what is clearly about to happen. Castle is all but hypnotized, trying to believe that the woman of his NC-17, mature-audiences-only dreams, the woman who is standing in front of him with his dick in her hand, is not a mirage. He's been in a self-imposed sexual desert for a while, so yeah, she might be a mirage.

Beckett had asked him what he was waiting for, but she could have asked herself the same question. She comes to her senses, or as much as she can in the circumstances, and with her free hand leads him two short steps to the desk. "Your floor was killing my back," she says, still marveling that such a rock-hard, magnetically furious-looking erection can be this supremely velvety. "So I'm just going to rest on my knees for a few minutes," she says, dropping down gracefully. "Okay, Castle? You don't mind, do you?" And without waiting for a reply, she takes him in her mouth.

No, he doesn't mind, no no no, he doesn't mind at all. Oh God, there's her tongue, that tongue that transfixes him every time she catches the tip of it between her teeth. And she really hasn't cracked a tooth, that's good, that's very very good. Her tongue, the same tongue that licks the foam from her lips after he has brought her a latte, is now licking him, from base to tip. It's circling and it's—where the hell did she go?

Beckett has briefly released him, tilting her head back and giving him a preposterously innocent smile. "You know, Castle, I missed lunch today, and you really do look good enough to eat." She swipes her thumb over him to collect some slick drops of pre-cum, and makes a show of indiscreetly licking it off. "This is really tasty. I think there might be something more there, something even tastier, don't you? How about if I investigate? I'm with the NYPD, you know, so it's a lawful search." And as she takes him back into her mouth, she manages to choke out, "And seizure."

He's not sure how he has been able to remain standing, but it's probably that he's at just the right angle to see her neck. He lusts after that neck, has perversely envied the thousands of cups of coffee he has watched her swallow. And now he's watching himself disappear and reappear and disappear down that same magnificent throat and holy shit, she could suck the chrome off his Ferrari. Suddenly he snaps to. He's not going to go—or come—first. Absolutely not. Ladies first! Even if her current behavior is magnificently unladylike. He runs his hands through Beckett's hair and gently but firmly pulls her away. Lifting her by the elbows, he brings her to her feet and in one quick move has his arms clasped tightly around her.

"Castle," she protests, "I wasn't fin—" He covers her open mouth with his and silences her with his tongue, rolling it seductively around hers and flicking it across her palate. His tongue begins languorously tracing the tiny, sensitive hollows between each ridge in the roof of her mouth, then runs it along the smooth sides, again and again, before unexpectedly sucking her tongue so hard into his mouth that her hands fly from his shoulder blades to the back of his neck. She grabs his hair and hangs on, as the fluctuating pressures and tempos of his tongue leave her breathless and set her insides on fire.

Her ability to focus is so compromised that she doesn't even register when his right hand stops caressing the go-to spot that he found just below her left ear and moves to cup her left buttock. He's so strong that with only one arm he hoists her up easily, drawing one of her legs around him. She follows with her other and now, wrapped firmly around his waist, she is only slightly embarrassed that she is beginning to cover him with juices of her own. "God, Castle," she says.

He chuckles. "Given what's going on here, Kate, don't you think we should be on a first-name basis?"

"I see your point—Rick," she says, pulling away just enough that she can see his erection trapped between their flushed bodies. "In fact I see another point, too."

That earns her a belly laugh from him. "I'll get you for that," he says. "Right now." Prising her legs off him, he lifts her straight up, a few inches off the floor, exhales sharply and upends her. She is upside down, her outstretched fingers a few inches above the floor. "Hang on to my ankles, Kate," he says, as he turns so that her back is braced against his desk. He moves her down slowly she can place her palms flat on the floor. "I'm putting you into a hand stand, but use the desk to support some of your weight. I've got your legs."

"Okay," she gasps, more from anticipation than exertion. Both of them realize, in this moment, that they have never had partners who are this strong or this trusting.

Knowing that even Kate won't be able to hold this position for long, he spreads her legs and immediately runs his open lips down the inside of her thigh. He cleaves her with his tongue, which he alternately flattens and curls as he explores this pink, throbbing gateway to what he is sure will be Heaven but never thought that he would experience in this world or the next. "Look how wet you are, Kate. Is this all for me?"

She's trembling. "Yes, fuck, it's for you, fuck, please, please, more."

"My pleasure," he says, as he drives his tongue into her again and again, deeper with each thrust. He feels as though every neuron in his body is in some kind of hyper state, and his taste buds are exploding, when in a dazzling series of staccato contractions, she clamps down violently on him, and screams.

She has never experienced an orgasm like this. The blood is whooshing in her head, her feet are arching, and she is writhing and cursing so lewdly that were she in control of her faculties she'd be appalled. She has never gushed like this before, either, fluids running down over her abdominal muscles and between her breasts.

Rick can barely contain her, but manages to calm her enough that he can cradle her against him and lower them both to the floor. They are both flushed and panting. Her eyes are closed, but he can't take his off her.

"Christ," she says, at last. "What was that, Rick?" She reaches behind her to take his hand, brings it forward and holds it over her breast. She turns her face to pinion him with a smile.

"So you liked it?" he asks, grinning.

"Did I like it? Did I like it? The only way that could have been any better is if you actually had a forked tongue." Still completely aroused, they begin to laugh again. She rolls over onto him so that they are lying skin to skin, in a full body press. She slides down until she can take him in hand again, and quickly runs her tongue around him. "You know what that is, Rick?"

"Uh, I think I'll let you tell me."

"It's a lick and a promise. Take me the hell to bed, _now_."

TBC…

**A/N** Thank you all for sticking with this story. I hope that you had a good weekend—and as much fun as they're having.


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: **The only part of Castle that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

**A/N:** Please note that this chapter is rated M. Also, for those who asked about the position in the previous chapter: to quote Detective Beckett herself, "Oh, it's possible."

Carrying Kate, who is clinging to him like skin-hugging Olympic running shorts, Rick sets a lightning pace to the adjoining room. Eat our dust, Usain Bolt! When his knee hits the edge of the bed, he rolls Kate on to it and all but throws himself on her. She's too quick, hooking one gorgeous, powerful leg over his and flipping them so that she is on top of him.

She's staring at his chest. She hasn't moved. Why is she still staring? Why is she holding her hands right over his pecs but not touching them? At last, she does. Working from the center of his chest, she runs her hands outwards in a series of sensual, massaging arcs. Then, drawing her hands down to bracket his waist, she leans forward and repeats the motion, following the same path across his chest but using the soft underside of her tongue, licking her way across the left side, then the right, left, right, left, right. The wet trail she's blazing makes him shiver involuntarily. "Wall," she says. "Wall. Wall."

Rick somehow manages to speak. "You want me to take you up against the wall, Detective Insatiable? I thought you said bed."

"Wall," she murmurs. "Your chest is like a damn wall. And if you and your chest leave this bed I will shoot you."

It's his turn to look preposterously innocent as he uses his own powerful leg to flip her onto her back. He grasps both her wrists in one of his soft but massive hands, and pulls them over her head, using his other hand to spread her thighs. Feathering his fingertips over her, he feels her getting impossibly wetter. Her murmurs have long since turned to moans when he plunges his index and middle fingers inside her. Holding his thumb outward, perpendicular to his fingers, causes them to move hard against her walls, and he curls them upwards to find not just her G-spot but her A-spot. He draws his thumb back to press down on her swollen clit and slowly rotates his hand.

She ignites. This is some intergalactic experience, stars going off, planets whirling, asteroids flying. What did he just do? He put his thumb out like a hitchhiker, is that what made his fingers feel so fantastically tight? Like the hitchhiker's guide to the freaking galaxy. Galaxies. She's in the galaxies or the stratosphere or something. Is there air up here? Who cares?

Rick is there when a very rosy Kate returns to Earth. He's looming over her, beaming, and she answers it with an even more incandescent one. They spend an eternity of seconds looking at each other until he nudges her with his tip and says, "If there's any shooting in this room, it's going to be with this."

"Oh, yeah? Well, ready, aim, fire, bud."

He hardly needs the go-ahead, but he takes it, sliding into her with one electrifying, practiced motion. Well, not practiced with her, plus he's never practicing on another woman again.

She pulls his head down, reaching out to suck his bottom lip into her mouth, letting go only long enough to urge him, "Top, Rick, top. Suck on my top lip and then we'll switch."

It's as though they've done this a million times together, and never before, as if they are visiting a beloved and familiar country but only now are exploring together. Their teeth and mouths and hands are everywhere. Whenever he twitches inside her, she responds with a sensual clench. There's hardly a millimeter between them, but they are too far apart. The rhythm that they have so easily established is almost overwhelming, yet she digs both her heels hard into his ass, which shortens but intensifies his already powerful thrusts. It's not enough; she wants something immense, unimaginable. "Harder, Rick, fuck me harder."

"God, you are the most magnificent creature I've ever seen. You want harder? Can you take it if I go into fucking overdrive with you?" His pistoning accelerates as he draws on some unknown renewable resource, and when he pulls her hair a little more sharply than he had intended she comes like a mad thing, writhing and arching and yelling his name. She is gripping him, inside and out, with a ferocity he has never experienced, and the look and the feel of her push him to a blistering finish. With three messy but blazing strokes, he spills and spills and spills into her.

It's a few moments before either one of them can move. "Wow," she says.

"Wow right back atcha."

"Quite an afternoon, huh?"

"Quite an afternoon. Can I show you something?"

"You already showed me plenty, Rick. Not sure I can manage anything else right this minute."

"Mind out of the gutter, Kate. I was wondering if you'd like to test my top-of-the-line shower, with six heads, one of which pulsates."

"A pulsating head? Who could resist? Help me up, please. I'm not sure my legs are working."

An hour later, after an ecstatically filthy adventure in the shower, they are sprawled in his bed. She is draped over him, blissed out but still so wired that she swears there are little jolts in every one of her veins, maybe even the capillaries. I'm the body electric, she thinks, wondering if she could jump start a car just by standing next to it, and surprised that she isn't transmitting shocks to Rick's damp chest. She smiles into him, plants a kiss on his left nipple and chuckles. "Know what I love most about you?"

"What?" a bleary Rick asks. Unlike his partner—wow, she's my partner, my capital P-a-r-t-n-e-r—he's still regrouping. He needs a little recovery time while she, empress of the double-X chromosome, apparently never does, though he'll have to conduct more research to verify it. "Is that a real question? Because I'm hoping what you love most about me right now is my—"

"Besides that," she says, giving him a reassuring squeeze. "When I was collapsing in giggles on your office floor four orgasms ago—"

"Five orgasms ago."

"Right, five. I lost track, couldn't help it."

"Good thing I could. You know, help. And keep count."

"Yeah, well as I was saying—before you interrupted me with that display of your proficiency in higher mathematics—when I was collapsing on the floor in giggles I realized how much you make me laugh. Captain Montgomery told me that last spring, right before he was killed, when I was furious at you and wanted you out. He said that I wasn't having any fun before you came along. He was right, but I never understood how important that was until today. No one makes me laugh like you do, Rick. It's the best thing in the world."

"The best thing? Really?" He tries, unsuccessfully, to look askance.

"Okay, given recent developments, second best." She rests her head below his collarbone and then laughs again. "Sheng Wang."

"Sheng Wang?"

"Yeah, I'm thinking about him."

"We just had seven-alarm sex and you're thinking about a standup comedian from San Francisco?"

She spreads one hand wide over his heart and holds his jaw with the other, rubbing her finger across his lips. "Calm down, calm down. I was remembering him saying, 'Why do people say, "Grow some balls"? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding.' I'm _complimenting_ you, Rick. You just gave me the greatest pounding I've ever had."

TBC…

**A/N** One more chapter to go. Thank you again for all your support. I love hearing from you.


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: **The only part of Castle that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

**A/N:** Please note that this chapter is rated M. As it is also the final one in this story, I'm dedicating it with thanks to my friend ISW, without whom I would never have had had the gumption to take the leap into FF.

Rick gives himself a mental fist bump and an internal high five, but really can't maintain radio silence after that comment.

"Do you think I could get a little trophy made, or a T shirt that I promise, promise, promise to wear only in bed, with you?" He points to his chest. "Best Pounder Ever!" No response.

"Kate?"

"Mmph," she replies, using every ounce of self-control not to cackle over his trophy-and-T-shirt idea.

"Are you sleeping?"

"No." She runs her foot enticingly along the back of his calf.

"Much as I'd love to stay awake with you, I can't. I need a nap, what with all the pounding I've been doing."

"Uh, is anyone coming home soon?"

"By 'anyone' you mean my mother or Alexis? No, Mother's in the Berkshires getting her Chi adjusted—whatever that requires, other than my American Express Centurion card—and Alexis is on an overnight class trip to Philadelphia."

"So it's just us chickens?" Kate asks, snuggling in to him.

"You did notice that I'm a rooster, right?"

"Yes, I did."

"And you are one gorgeous chick. Chicken. A good laying chicken."

"Go to sleep, Rick, you handsome cock." She kisses him lightly, but he's already out cold, with his warm arm across her chest. She follows not long after, once she has identified the feeling that is covering her like a fine mist. It had been absent so long from her life that she hadn't at first recognized it: happiness.

In the early evening, they both emerge from a very deep sleep. They're face-to-face, on their sides, and Kate is the first to break the smile stand-off by speaking. "Hey, Castle."

"I thought we established that we're on a first-name basis."

"We are, but you'll always be Castle to me, first." She gives him a kiss with just enough tongue to wake him up for real. "All that talk we were having about chickens made me starving."

"Hungry for me already, Beckett?"

"Yes, but right now I need some eggs, scrambled. And toast. And bacon. Coffee on the side, and don't be stingy, baby."

"Quoting Garbo, eh? Such a mystery you are, Beckett."

She smacks him on his delicious bare butt. "Get going."

"I am, but I require a culinary muse, so you have to get going, too." She bats her eyelashes at him, but doesn't move.

Castle gets out of bed, goes to his dresser and puts on a clean pair of boxers.

"Are those silk? You have silk Captain America boxers?"

"Yes I do. Perfection in fashion, as in other things, is my goal, and I'm glad to see that your powers of observation are as keen as ever," he says, walking to her side of the bed and abruptly pulling her out of it. "Time to haul ass, Beckett. And might I add, that is a most alluring ass you're hauling."

When they finish their dinnertime breakfast, Castle puts the plates and mugs in the dishwasher. Beckett, wearing only the shirt that he had discarded earlier in the day, a lifetime ago, begins to walk away.

"Castle? Would you like some dessert? I'm it." And with that she dashes back to his bedroom.

She gives a little shriek when he grabs her from behind and then spreads her out on the bed. Is that a hum? Is he humming again?

"My turn to pick a song," he says. And then he starts. "Stay, lady, stay, stay with your man awhile. Until the break of day, let me see you make him smile."

Beckett picks up the next line before he can get to it. "His clothes are dirty but his hands are clean, and you're the best thing that he's ever seen."

Castle stops her with a kiss. "It's true," he says. "You are the best thing I've ever seen. But Kate, wait, wait, wait, you know country-style Bob Dylan? I think my love for you just crossed every state line from here to Nashville. That's New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee."

"So is this going to be our thing? Singing?"

"Why not? There's a song for every occasion."

"Yeah? And what's this occasion?" she asks, snapping the waistband of his boxers.

"This?" He reaches down, unbuttons the shirt that she had appropriated, and slips it off her. "This is foresinging, you know, foreplay, but with singing."

Beckett is looking a little dreamy as he rolls her onto her stomach. He pulls her legs apart and kneels between them, leaning forward to leave a kiss between each vertebra in her long and elegant back. She sighs and gives a little movement that's half shudder, half wiggle. "Mmmm," she says, as she hears a silken rustle and feels him rising to his knees. He runs his palm from the base of her spine to her neck and then moves back down, this time touching each vertebra not with his lips but with the tip of his penis.

It's a dream. She must be dreaming. Had she gone back to sleep? She tests her theory by reaching around to the middle of her back and finds him there. Oh, no, she's most certainly wide awake and so, from the feel of things, is he. It's a slightly awkward position, but she reaches higher and begins to massage his balls. He groans sensually and pushes her legs a little farther apart. Feeling her warm dampness on the inside of his thigh, he spreads some on himself and, knowing that she's more than ready, glides in. What follows is the tenderest, most protracted lovemaking that either of them has ever known, each giving and getting and giving in return. And before they drift to sleep again, they exchange whispers and questions and answers and yes, laughter.

Around six, Castle wakes feeling hot and oddly pinned down, and wonders vaguely if the A/C has turned off. Peeling his eyes open, he discovers the heat source is none other than Beckett, who is plastered on top of him, chest to chest, and has trapped his legs within her own.

"Good morning," she says.

"It is a good morning. Outstanding morning."

"I hate to say it, but I have to go to work."

"Already? Right now? "

"Well, I think we've got half an hour to spare," she says, moving partway off him but still holding his thighs firmly between her own. She pushes herself up so that she is straddling his hips.

"Going for a ride?" Castle asks.

"I am. My favorite kind," she says. "You know how I love to drive. And this" —she grabs his rapidly hardening erection, "is the best model ever. Stick shift. Handles like a dream. 0 to 80 in one minute." Descending slowly, she takes him in. "Fill 'er up, Castle."

And oh, he does.

**A/N:** Thank you all for the amazing support for my, uh, maiden voyage on the FF seas. I'll be back soon, I hope.


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